Rush is such a douche bag anyway. He blatantly made fun of Michael J. Fox for having parkinsons saying that he was using it as a gimmick to guilt people or some crap. I don't know, the guy's a shithead.

Ever watched a cat play with a mouse? That certainly seems to meet the requirements for torture. However, we shouldn't anthropomorphize too much. It is doubtful that the cat has the empathy required to understand what it is doing to the mouse and without that knowledge cannot be guilty of intentional torture. Furthermore, we do not know what it is like to be a mouse. We do not know how it feels. Is it actually capable of being "tortured" in the way we would understand such a concept? Better to err on the side of caution, of course, but there's no sense getting too worked up about such things.

If it makes you feel better, mice can be evil little bastards. I had some as pets when I was a kid and they quite literally ate each other alive. They had plenty of food/water, plenty of toys, and plenty of space to avoid each other when they wanted some alone time. But they chose to hunt each other down like furry little psychopaths. Then, when only one was left, he chewed off his own ears. I kept hamsters and gerbils before this with no problem at all giving me a lifelong suspicion that mice are just fucking mental.

As a teenager I once had a mouse in my bedroom that needed to be dealt with. I was sitting on my bed and saw it just happily wandering around my room. My parents had traps in the house but clearly this mouse wasn't falling for those so I grabbed my air pistol and, making a shot I'm still quite proud of, shot it through the throat from a decent distance. I'd never killed anything other than insects before that. I was shocked by how much blood pumped out of it and how long it took to stop breathing. I felt terrible watching the little guy die. I've never killed anything since then though I wouldn't hesitate if it needed doing. Killing is a strange thing really. I think I understand why people enjoy hunting. I believe I would greatly enjoy it. The intensity of the build-up and then the thrill of the actual take-down. I'm just put off by the killing part. Intellectually I do not wish to kill anything I do not absolutely need to kill. But a part of me does want to. A part of me wants that rush. As a rational being I can easily ignore that and maintain my no-killing lifestyle. But the idea still fascinates me. A desire to take life seems quite common amongst humanity. Where does that desire stem from? What purpose does it serve? You could argue that it helped our ancestors acquire food but I think hunger would have been enough of a motivator for that. I want to know why humanity often seems to enjoy killing just for the sake of killing. Torture is even harder to understand, at least when performed for purely sadistic reasons. I can't say that I can see the appeal of that, not even on any kind of instinctive level. What beneficial evolutionary function did cruelty serve, or is it a side effect of some other function?

I'm rather sleep deprived, hence the oddness of this post.

03-17-2013

wheelchairman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paint_It_Black

As a teenager I once had a mouse in my bedroom that needed to be dealt with. I was sitting on my bed and saw it just happily wandering around my room. My parents had traps in the house but clearly this mouse wasn't falling for those so I grabbed my air pistol and, making a shot I'm still quite proud of, shot it through the throat from a decent distance. I'd never killed anything other than insects before that. I was shocked by how much blood pumped out of it and how long it took to stop breathing. I felt terrible watching the little guy die. I've never killed anything since then though I wouldn't hesitate if it needed doing. Killing is a strange thing really. I think I understand why people enjoy hunting. I believe I would greatly enjoy it. The intensity of the build-up and then the thrill of the actual take-down. I'm just put off by the killing part. Intellectually I do not wish to kill anything I do not absolutely need to kill. But a part of me does want to. A part of me wants that rush. As a rational being I can easily ignore that and maintain my no-killing lifestyle. But the idea still fascinates me. A desire to take life seems quite common amongst humanity. Where does that desire stem from? What purpose does it serve? You could argue that it helped our ancestors acquire food but I think hunger would have been enough of a motivator for that. I want to know why humanity often seems to enjoy killing just for the sake of killing. Torture is even harder to understand, at least when performed for purely sadistic reasons. I can't say that I can see the appeal of that, not even on any kind of instinctive level. What beneficial evolutionary function did cruelty serve, or is it a side effect of some other function?

I wanted to preserve this post where you accidentally indicate you understand the rush of hunting, seemingly cause you once shot a mouse with an airgun in your own room (I'm hoping without even getting up from the chair you're presumably sitting in).

Anyways, yeah due to the strong language used prior to the block quote in the OP, and because it was about Rush Limbauth, famous troll, I thought this would be way more shocking. I was surprised that this probably ranks as one of the least shocking Limbaugh related story I've ever read.

03-17-2013

WebDudette

Quote:

Originally Posted by prettyflyforablackchick

I've never had to kill an animal of that size, but I always figured "glue trap + drop heavy book from great height" would be my plan of attack. My real plan of attack ended up being ownership of a cat. :)

Uhh... glue traps are kinda torturous. I mean, unless you're constantly watching it, the mouse is probably going to be trapped for hours.

03-17-2013

Llamas

I definitely don't think this was torture. This was just him being a complete idiot. Someone who gets pleasure from intentionally torturing animals is fucked up. Someone who doesn't know how to kill a mouse and puts it through a torturous process in attempts to kill it is not (regardless of the fact that this particular person is fucked up otherwise).

Cats do torture their prey, but yes I doubt they are capable of much empathy. Cats will also eat their owner within a day of the owner's death. Cats are not that smart, and they're not that empathetic. It'd be weird compare how they treat a mouse to how a person treats a mouse.

03-17-2013

wheelchairman

We're adding human, and specifically even Western values, nor because West is best, but because we have the prerequisite levels of security and wealth to concern ourselves with th well-being of other things. So cats as completely non-human as they are probably wouldn't be able to even remotely understand the complex emptions we are talking about.

And if it is cultural we're all fucked, because the odds of alien races coincidentally sharing our views on the value of life (which in our own history is a pretty rare value) they'll almost certainly view us much the same as a cat with a mouse.